Pacific Rim: Giant Robots Battling Giant Monsters And It’s Awesome!

“Today. At the edge of our hope. At the end of our time. We have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man or woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the monsters that are at our door, and bring the fight to them. Today we are canceling the apocalypse!” – Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba)

Take one part Sons of Anarchy. Mix it with the guy from Prometheus, and add in a touch of GLaDOS from the Portal series. Put it all together and what you get is Pacific Rim, or better yet one of the most badass movies ever conceived for the big screen. It’s like Godzilla for a new generation. An over the top mix of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Voltron, and the 1990 movie Robot Jox. It’s giant robot mechs versus giant monsters battling it out on a global stage. Basically it’s the perfect summer popcorn movie filled with two and a half hours of awesomeness that I didn’t want to end. I want more!

From the opening moments of the movie all the way to it’s climactic ending I was treated with what Pacific Rim is all about. Robots and monsters duking it out in a battle of supremacy. These monsters (known as Kaiju) are out to ravage the world. In order to fight the monsters, the people of Earth cast their differences aside and created monsters of their own called Jaegers. Each country had their own unique Jaeger each with their own abilities. The only similarity was that each robot was controlled by two human pilots with their brains neurally linked to one another making the perfect fighting machine.

Charlie Hunnam stars as the pilot of America’s Jaeger Gipsy Danger. After losing his brother in a previous battle against a Kaiju he’s hit rock bottom only to come back again when commanding officer Stacker Pentecost, played by Idris Elba, recruits him for an important mission. Both actors did a great job in their roles. However it was Elba’s big apocalypse canceling speech along with a “Tyler Durden” like moment that will be remembered most. Rounding out the cast in notable performances included Rinko Kikuchi as a rookie pilot named Mako, Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as a pair of fast talking and yet “campy” scientists on the Kaiju, and Ron Perlman as a black market Kaiju organ dealer named Hannibal Chau. Perlman’s character was a bit short lived, but did feature a Samuel L. Jackson Deep Blue Sea moment that had me laughing.

While the actors were serviceable in their roles it was however the Jaeger vs. Kaiju combat that were the real stars here. Director Guillermo Del Toro really focuses in on the combat making each battle feel intense unlike Michael Bay’s work with the Transformers movies where each battle was filled with chaos making it hard to pay attention to what was really going on. Battles were long and satisfying no matter what the outcome was. Del Toro also captured the sheer sense of size as these humongous warriors went into battle. I also really liked how the Jaegers would use more than just conventional weaponry and use items like trailers for punching and even a freighter which was used like a baseball bat to a Kaiju’s head. Awesome!

Pacific Rim is the type of popcorn flick that I’ve always been waiting for. From the first battle to the last I had a smile on my face from each punch and death blow delivered. There was a slow moment here and there, but just when I thought things would slow to a crawl another battle took place and my adrenaline was pumping once again. Pacific Rim as a whole is the blueprint to what all summer movies should be instead of milking the cow and cashing in with multiple sequels. After experiencing this robot vs. monster masterpiece on the big screen I can definitely see Pacific Rim on my blu-ray shelf this holiday season.